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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Argentina
South Africa
Poland
Peru
Indonesia
Ukraine
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Hungary
Portugal
Ecuador
Netherlands
Pakistan
Iraq
Sweden
Philippines
Bulgaria
Bolivia
Egypt
Switzerland
Slovakia
Austria
Japan
Bangladesh
Morocco
Tunisia
Greece
Guatemala
Saudi Arabia
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Israel
Panama
Lebanon
Croatia
Serbia
Moldova
Ireland
China
Honduras
Paraguay
Slovenia
Georgia
North Macedonia
Lithuania
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Dominican Republic
Kazakhstan
Burma
Algeria
Nepal
Costa Rica
Ethiopia
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Afghanistan
Denmark
Belarus
Albania
Kenya
Nigeria
Sudan
El Salvador
Latvia
Kosovo
South Korea
Oman
Venezuela
Zimbabwe
Kyrgyzstan
United Arab Emirates
Kuwait
Malaysia
Montenegro
Syria
Zambia
Malawi
Senegal
Uruguay
Australia
Estonia
Finland
Mozambique
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Luxembourg
Cameroon
Eswatini
Norway
Uzbekistan
Jamaica
Sri Lanka
Angola
Bahrain
Namibia
Botswana
Somalia
Mauritania
Cuba
Malta
Madagascar
Uganda
Belize
Lesotho
Rwanda
Qatar
Cyprus
Haiti
Cote d'Ivoire
Guyana
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Guinea
Andorra
Gabon
South Sudan

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Argentina
South Africa
Poland
Peru
Indonesia
Ukraine
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Hungary
Portugal
Ecuador
Netherlands
Pakistan
Iraq
Sweden
Philippines
Bulgaria
Bolivia
Egypt
Switzerland
Slovakia
Austria
Japan
Bangladesh
Morocco
Tunisia
Greece
Guatemala
Saudi Arabia
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Israel
Panama
Lebanon
Croatia
Serbia
Moldova
Ireland
China
Honduras
Paraguay
Slovenia
Georgia
North Macedonia
Lithuania
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Dominican Republic
Kazakhstan
Burma
Algeria
Nepal
Costa Rica
Ethiopia
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Afghanistan
Denmark
Belarus
Albania
Kenya
Nigeria
Sudan
El Salvador
Latvia
Kosovo
South Korea
Oman
Venezuela
Zimbabwe
Kyrgyzstan
United Arab Emirates
Kuwait
Malaysia
Montenegro
Syria
Zambia
Malawi
Senegal
Uruguay
Australia
Estonia
Finland
Mozambique
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Luxembourg
Cameroon
Eswatini
Norway
Uzbekistan
Jamaica
Sri Lanka
Angola
Bahrain
Namibia
Botswana
Somalia
Mauritania
Cuba
Malta
Madagascar
Uganda
Belize
Lesotho
Rwanda
Qatar
Cyprus
Haiti
Cote d'Ivoire
Guyana
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Guinea
Andorra
Gabon
South Sudan